There is yet another and more satisfactory way of attacking this problem of the birth rate--not a direct, but an indirect one. Says the great statistician, Marcus Rubin, in his paper on "Population and Birth Rate," read before the British Association at Bradford, September, 1900: "Quite generally it may be remarked that a large birth rate will crowd the age-groups corresponding to childhood comparatively to what would result from a small birth rate. It is also clear that, when the adults produce a numerous offspring, the latter will, other things being equal, constitute a larger proportion of the whole population than if it were less numerous." Rubin has Denmark in mind, and western Europe;--he is not dreaming of the Gulf States. Let us apply this common-sense principle to the case in hand. Here is a table of the per thousands of the population at various ages, native White and Black. We take the native White, since immigrants are generally of full age, and we are now concerned with the general fertility of Caucasian natives and not of foreigners; of the latter, it is confessedly very high. 1880 1890 1900 Under 1 year N.W. 33 30 30 N. 34 23 28 From 1 to 4 years N.W. 123 112 110 N. 131 111 109 From 5 to 9 years N.W. 144 136 133 N. 154 145 136 Total under 10 years N.W. 300 278 273 N. 319 284 273 Here the situation is revealed with great clearness. We see that both in White and in Black the race is aging; extreme youth is becoming less and less conspicuous. But the diversities are broadly marked. In babes, the Blacks fall behind by two per thousand of their total; in children from one to four years, they again fall behind, but only one per thousand; in children from five to nine they excel by three per thousand; in the grand total of children under ten, they exactly equal the native Whites. This record of itself clearly indicates a failing fecundity in the Blacks; the younger, the fewer, comparatively. Still more clearly is this seen, on comparing the earlier record of 1880. Then the Black youth surpassed the White relatively at all ages--by one, by eight, by ten, and in the grand total by nineteen. All this superiority has been lost in twenty years. It seems hard to imagine a more impressive record. High mortality among infants will not explain this, especially it will not explain the loss in the score of years, nor the relative scarcity of the very young.[39]